Batman Red Rain Statue: Behind the Scenes

Brock Otterbacher, Creative Director, Toys & Collectibles

I've always loved the idea of taking two-dimensional art, and translating it into three dimensions in a way that not only honors the original piece, but enhances ideas found in the original art.

Case in point is Francesco Francavilla's Batman Red Rain poster, inspired by the Batman & Dracula Elseworlds comic, and the art within by Kelley Jones. Originally done for our Batman 75th Anniversary show in 2014, Francesco's poster was one that jumped out to me immediately as one that needed to be seen in 3D.

Though it's not the first poster we've shown translated into a statue (that would be Phantom City Creative's Godzilla, which will be up for pre-order in the very near future), the Batman Red Rain Statue will be the first that we offered to you! With this in mind, I wanted to walk you through a quick take on the process of translating a poster into a statue.

First, we start with an idea. In this case, I knew right away I wanted to take background elements of the poster and incorporate them into the statue, like the Wayne tombstone and the vampires skulls. I did a fast & rough mock-up to show to Francesco, and get his take.

Francesco liked the take, but wanted to add more flourishes, like turning my idea of the "cave" holding the skulls into a coffin, as well as have Batman holding another skull in his left hand. The more macabre, the merrier! It was also his idea to have the Mondo Exclusive be a switch-out right hand holding a wooden stake.

Next, we presented it to veteran sculptor Nathan Mansfield. Check out this little movie of the sculpture, still in-progress.

And here's the final sculpture. Nathan killed it, not only nailing the concept we presented, but added extra details like texture on Batman.

Next, we have it digitally printed by the best of the best, Jason Wires. Here's how it looks when that's done:

Then it's molded and cast, then off to paint! Mara Ancheta and Andrea Coleman captured the graphic look I was hoping for perfectly.

And there we have the Batman Red Rain statue, just in time for Halloween! Hope you like this unique take on Batman, and enjoy having him haunt your shelves year 'round!